


Groomed

by arazuta



Series: Brother's Blood [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-02
Updated: 2016-09-02
Packaged: 2018-08-12 16:06:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7940740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arazuta/pseuds/arazuta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s well groomed, in more ways than one, but he only realizes the literal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Groomed

Waking with the sun, Hanzo climbs out of bed and dresses for training. He wraps his ankles, for reinforcement. He hates the way the elders whisper when he strains them, hates the way they make him feel weak. 

Hanzo Shimada is eight years old and has already been training for half his life. Early mornings in the dojo are not uncommon. Training every day. Various kinds. How to wield a fist and a dagger and a sword and a bow. Guns, too, for emergency, but they’re considered low class. 

Fighting is not all he’s trained in. How to wield a brush, a pen, a sharp tongue, a sharp mind. Traditions, led through the motions, made to rehearse over and over. No mistake is forgiven. He trains the motions into his muscle memory. He’s taught how to arrange meetings, how to assert authority, how to negotiate. He drinks in everything his father does. Everything he must emulate. 

He’s taught how to think. What to be. 

Genji has just begun his training and he takes it it with no less enthusiasm, but much less formality. Hanzo grits his teeth in frustration as Genji tries to convince the instructor to teach them some move from a cartoon. Grabs Genji by the arm and shushes him when he sees the sharpness in the mentor’s eyes. He doesn’t want Genji to learn the punishment for such foolishness. 

***

Waking with the sun, Hanzo rises from bed and dresses. The day is a full one. 

Hanzo Shimada is sixteen. School, for keeping public appearances, is his concern by day. It feels like a waste of time, he learns more elsewhere, has better things to spend his time on than arithmetic he mastered when he was twelve. 

He reminds himself that it has a purpose. It’s for the good of the clan, to shed them in a positive light. His high grades, exam scores, wide range of club activities-- they all bolster the clan’s image. Image is an important thing. He learned this young. First impressions are everything. You only meet someone once. You have to inspire awe. Beautifully intimidating. Make yourself alluring, a wanted ally, but fearsome, an unwanted enemy. 

When all these activities of pretense of normal life are through, he returns home and his world is dominated by this even more. More training, mentoring the young, spending time with the clan, going out, meetings, strong-arming enemies, engaging with geishas at social events as a way of demonstrating position, riches, missions, assassinations, capture, torture. 

His clothing is no longer strictly scrutinized by the others because he’s long since learned how to appear. It’s another thing that’s been strictly trained into him. How to represent his clan, represent himself. He’s well groomed, in more ways than one, but he only realizes the literal. 

***

Waking with the sun, Hanzo glides out of bed, all practiced grace in getting dressed. There’s no time to waste, as he’s never been busier. 

Hanzo is twenty seven years old and he’s taken over much of the duties of the clan. His father’s death is not sudden, as he’s somehow always been anticipating. He’s never really thought of it, but the thought of it being prolonged is so bizarre to him. 

Such a powerful man. Bedridden. Slowly weakening. The Shimada clan has never been in a more delicate position. Rival gangs see his fading as a shaking in the foundation of the whole clan. Hanzo must be strong. Must prove them wrong. Must reassert. Must establish himself as an even more ferocious leader than his father, to keep their way of life safe. 

It seems he rarely gets peace; between consulting his father, and the elders, and running so many meetings, dealings, keeping business going on his own, tactical strikes, tactical conversations, constant threats, always keeping vigilante, deeply paranoid. One wrong move could put the whole thing up in smoke. Failure always has consequence, but it’s never had more. 

Genji does not make it easier. He’s ever a free spirit and the amount of trouble and bad reputation he stirs up for the Shimadas is unsettling. He helps on missions, sure, is competent with his blade and competent with his wit. But he seems less and less interested in being a component of the clan and he frequently skips important meetings. It shows disrespect. It brings Hanzo so much trouble. It brings the clan dishonor. 

The elders scowl and murmur about it. They tell him to reign Genji in. He remembers grabbing Genji by the arm and shushing him. If only it were that simple. 

***

Hanzo is twenty eight years old and he did not sleep. Everything he’s ever known is a lie. It tastes like acid on his tongue, burning him up from the inside. Everything in him is burning. He didn’t have a choice. He never did. It was duty. It was, it was, it was. The mantra doesn’t do anything to stop the stinging tears. 

He can’t reconcile this. He’s been trying, for days. This is not what he was promised. What they were promised. 

He has to get away.

Hanzo thinks that for the first time he knows fear. Real fear. He’s known plenty of varieties. The instinctive flinch that came when his father would raise his hand quickly, even into his adult years his body tensing subtly, preparing for a strike. The primal fear in battle that kept him sharp, propelled him forward. This is nothing like those, those fears that develop as survival mechanism. This is uncertainty. Not knowing what stands before him because the clan is his entire world. This is a gaping void. Escaping is like stepping off a cliff, blindfolded. 

He wants to be a coward. Wants to steal away in the night and never look back. He doesn’t allow himself the luxury and he instead stands in front of his clan, his life, his destiny, and denounces all of them. He feels as though he’s in freefall when he fights his way out. 

***

Waking with the sun, Hanzo climbs out of bed and gathers up his gi, dressed, swift, ready to go, thinking through the day’s duties before remembering that there are none and stopping cold. 

Hanzo Shimada is twenty nine years old and one and a half years later, he still sometimes wakes with the strictly trained schedule of the day running through his mind, moving mechanically, almost walking into the wall where his door used to be before he remembers that he is not at home-- that he has no home. He left it. 

Places, faces, routine; none of them are familiar anymore as Hanzo ghosts from place to place. Being a ghost comes with no rest, as it turns out. There’s a fight around every turn. The Shimada clan wants his head. They’ve already had everything else of his, but they won’t be satiated until they’ve swallowed him whole.

In idle moments, he considers giving himself over. After all, he cannot escape them. Shimada is his name, it’s in his blood, in everything he does. It’s in the training he puts himself through to keep himself sharp, in the steadying breaths he tries to take in meditation-- harder, these days, to do. It’s in the way he draws back his bow-- he left his sword behind, his embodied regret, it still looked blood-soaked to him, in his memory. 

It’s in the dragons that bristle in his skin, in his instincts, that give him power, that come to him, that provide him no comfort anymore. He’s undeserving of it, probably. 

It’s in the way that he expects the world, still, sometimes. They promised him everything, coaxed him, harsh lessons and soft talks, of responsibility, poise, dedication, ruthlessness. A living weapon, a constantly coiled spring. The slightest mistake a whiplash. Perfect, a tool, at their disposal, culling enemies. It’s in the blood that stains his hands, cakes under his nails invisibly. 

It is, too, in the way that he can’t bring himself to give himself up. The same lessons mean he fights tooth and nail for his life whenever it comes under threat; victory, success, failure never an option-- tear apart, escape, win. A driving force. He cannot die. He’s Hanzo Shimada. He cannot die. There’s only a few months until another anniversary of his most gruesome mistake. He cannot die. 

While standing in his bare room, the place he’s boarding for now-- barely able to scrape by at this point, with what he’d taken from the clan before leaving dwindling to scraps-- he misses home. The simple luxuries he had taken for granted. The large tubs where he could soak in the warm water, the silken sheets of his bed, the window slanting sunlight into his room, the attendants that carefully composed his meals. The set schedule, a time to get up, a purpose. Somewhere to go. Something to do. Something besides running, thinking, burning shame. Attention of the geishas, never much more than a way to pass the time and demonstrate his status, is even missed. 

And then, too suddenly, he hates himself. This is all in his blood. He can never be better than the Shimada clan. Their lessons are instilled too deep-- part of him, part of his being, he is the inheritor of the Shimada house, name, everything. 

He is the clan embodied. He was brought up wrong and crooked and is going to be what they forced him to be for his whole life, despite his best efforts. How can he yearn for what made him kill his brother, unless he really is unforgivable?


End file.
